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TÜV Rheinland

Gujarat Borosil has begun producing its first 2-millimetre tempered glass parts after 18 months of research. The Indian business had received a personal congratulatory letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Managing Director Shreevar Kheruka. It had invested Indian Rupee (INR) 2 billion (around EUR 26.67 million) in the facility. The technology targets the booming solar PV industry, but will likewise be offered to solar collector manufacturers.

This July, SP issued new Solar Keymark certificates for four Danish Arcon-Sunmark collectors after the Swedish test lab and certification body had retested these four systems in April. The retesting had been necessary, as SP had received six complaints because of a lower-than-expected c1 (heat loss coefficient) value on certificates issued in November 2015. At first, it looked like a case closed, but the stakeholders who submitted complaints are now calling for a reform of the complaint procedures and tolerances established by the Solar Keymark Network (SKN).

In February 2013, French manufacturer Dualsun launched its hybrid solar panel, also called PVT, a technology which produces electricity and heat simultaneously. Dualsun has been the third French company after solar specialists Sillia and ABCD International to introduce this new technology to the French market. “We are really at the beginning of this combined technology in France. Most businesses on the market are still at the research stage,” says Daniel Mugnier, a solar heating expert from French consultancy Tecsol. The Dualsun unit consists of photovoltaic cells in the front and a metal heat absorber in the back, which are laminated together. The PVT element is inserted in a metal frame and installed on the roof. The photo shows the first demonstration project on the roof of a single family house in Roquebrune, France. Six Dualsun panels have been set up here for a family of six.
Photo: Dualsun

In February, Ulrich Fritzsche took the collector manufacturers that were gathered at the SMEThermal 2012 conference on a special tour around the globe. His presentation in Berlin, Germany, listed the collector standards and quality guidelines across the world’s key solar thermal markets: Australia, Brazil, China, India, Turkey and the USA (see the attached presentation). All in all, the Director of the Technical Competence Center Solar Thermal at TÜV Rheinland shed light on six different standards and their requirements to test systems locally. The differences between each testing procedure are one of the reasons why global trade is rather expensive for collector manufacturers. Figure: TÜV Rheinland

MCG has plans to start producing a flat plate collector with a Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) in the near future. The Portuguese company located in Carregado 50 km north of Lisbon has manufactured components for the automotive industry since 1978. “MCG possesses know-how in the area of mass assembly and production. Equipped with this knowledge, it could gain the pole position on the solar thermal market and the strength to maintain it,” MCG Solar Sales Director Paulo Neves says. Photo: MCG

Norwegian aluminium producer Norsk Hydro ASA announced its first clients to order aluminium tubes for the production of absorbers in a press release at the end of January. In the press release, the corporation named German collector manufacturer Solarbayer GmbH and Polish collector manufacturer Hewalex as the first to do so. Photo: Hydro

The Australian solar thermal market is growing rapidly – on average 27 % within the last two years. One factor in the countrywide growth is the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) provided for newly installed solar thermal systems.

The extension of the federal tax credits by eight years and the election of Barack Obama have suddenly made the U.S. market for solar thermal energy far more attractive. The importance of imports of collectors and systems is growing. The number of flat plate and evacuated tube collectors has increased more than tenfold within three years according to the statistics of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) from 3,000 m2 (2005) to 36,000 m2 (2007).